more than these bones
by otterton
Summary: The silence has a disturbing way of needling under her skin and burrowing into her brain until the only thing she can hear is the sound of a million ghosts. (Fem!OC/Natasha)
1. one: the face of death

Title: more than these bones

Rating: M

Summary: The silence has a disturbing way of needling under her skin and burrowing into her brain until the only thing she can hear is the sound of a million ghosts. (Fem!OC/Natasha)

Warnings: descriptions of wide-scale destruction, violence, anxiety, disturbing elements.

AN at bottom.

* * *

…

**.one.**

**.the face of death.  
**

_Mors aurem vellens, 'Vivite,' ait, 'venio.'_

_Death twitches my ear, "Live," he says, "I am coming."_

— Commonly attributed to Vergil —

…

* * *

.

Ana has a hard time going to sleep most nights.

If it's not bad dreams and stress and thoughts about stupid things she said to people years prior, it's trains blasting their horns on the tracks next to her window or the next-door neighbors having a party until six in the morning.

Tonight, it's a party, just like it has been for the past three days. This one had started at nine-thirty and has been going for – Ana pulls the pillow off her head to check her alarm clock – five hours.

_Fuck it!_

She takes a minute, so she can stop envisioning murder, and then she throws the covers off.

It takes thirty seconds to throw on a pair of boxers and an oversized Mets shirts. In another thirty seconds, she's storming out of her apartment and slamming on the door to 506.

"C'mon, you bastards, I know you can hear me," she mutters as she slams her first against the door again and again and agai—

The door flies open with an aggravated "_Christ!_" The guy stares at her like _she's_ the one who's been keeping him up on all night on a Sunday. "The _fuck_ do you want?"

Ana clenches her fists by her side, hackles rising. "It's almost three in the morning, what the fuck do you think I want?"

He stares at her for a second before he starts laughing. She opens her mouth, but before she can say anything else, he slams the door in her face. And then, impossibly, the music gets even louder. "_Asshole!_" Ana shrieks, slapping the door again.

She's sure she hears laughter on the other side of the door.

Defeated, she turns back into her apartment.

.

* * *

.

Her alarm goes off at six, and Ana wants to cry. She has only gotten an hour, maybe an hour and a half of sleep.

She lies in bed and stares at her ceiling, considering whether she wants to call in sick or not. But New York City was expensive to live in before The Incident, and it's even more expensive now. She can't afford to take days off unnecessarily.

So she hauls her tired body out of bed and into her shower.

At eight, she's slipping out of her apartment, and she can hear her alarm still going off as she waits for the elevator. Old building, thin walls.

She smiles.

It's the little things.

.

* * *

.

Ana knows she looks like shit because she feels even worse. She still doesn't appreciate it when River takes one look at her and tells her as much.

"I'm wearing makeup," she snaps back with a dark look, ignoring Selene's snort of disbelief. "It can't be that bad."

Selene clicks her tongue. "No amount of makeup could cover up _those _bags, sweetheart."

Ana scowls at the other woman, sending her into a laughing fit. River smirks at her, looking like the cat that ate the cream, and she has the briefest urge to take the pepper spray out of her purse and mace the bastard right then and there.

Instead, she sets her purse down on the front desk and heads to the back to grab a glass of water and some aspirin.

It's going to be a long day. Not only is it Monday, but they're preparing the gallery for a new exhibition. They need all hands on deck, and she can't assault her coworkers over the state of her face, no matter how annoying they may be.

She must take a little too long. She doesn't hear the door open, but she does hear Ivan shouting her name.

"Coming!"

.

* * *

.

Ana does not like running. She especially does not like running in heels. But it's 2:54, and her favorite bakery is closing soon, so run she must. She can't miss it, not today. She's had a distinct lack of caffeine and cute baristas in her day, and it needs to be fixed. Immediately.

Ana smiles at the thought and stops to catch her breath a block away. Some people are eyeing her like she's insane, but she tries to ignore it. There have been way crazier things terrorizing New York City, like aliens and Norse gods and a giant green rage monster. A normal woman in a pencil skirt running through the streets of Manhattan shouldn't be too strange.

She turns the corner, heads into the café, and smiles when she sees Melanie at the counter. "Anika! You're here!" The woman turns and shouts to the back, "Sam, you owe me five bucks!"

Ana raises an eyebrow, and Melanie's smile gets bigger. "Sam bet you weren't coming in today, but I knew you would. Thanks for making me marginally richer." Ana wonders, briefly, how the woman is able to make a wink look cute as she returns a smile.

"Always happy to be of service, Mel."

The barista giggles and asks if she wants the usual. Ana nods, watches her work. "I saved this for you, you know," Melanie says over her shoulder. "Someone came in a few minutes asking for it, but I knew you'd be in."

_I could kiss you, _she thinks, smiling.

"Buy me dinner first, Anika!" The woman in question blinks, and then flushes when she realizes she's spoken out loud. How embarrassing. She really is off today.

The microwave beeps, and the barista retrieves the wrap and turns, then freezes. "Melanie? You okay?" Ana is thinking the other woman must be freaked by her, why was she such an _idiot_, honestly, when the barista drops the wrap.

Her hand is gone.

The women watch as the rest of Melanie's arm disintegrates. Melanie's horrified eyes meet Ana's, and then she's just –

Gone.

Dust.

Ana stares at the spot where the barista had been, pale and shaking and breathing hard, when she hears a crash and screaming. Her blood is rushing to her ears as she turns.

A bus crashed into an office building across the street. She watches as another person, two, three – even a tree – just, just disintegrate.

Turn into dust.

Disappear into the wind.

.

* * *

.

She's running again, and this time she doesn't stop until she reaches the gallery. The lights are on, but she doesn't see anyone.

_That's okay_, she thinks to herself, trying to ignore the way her head is pounding in tandem with her heartbeat. _They're probably upstairs, setting up._

She pushes open the doors, sees the phone hanging off the hook on the front desk. "River?" she calls out. "Selene? Ivan?"

There are no voices calling back to her, no sounds of conversation or fighting coming from upstairs. She stumbles forward, calling out again, and again. Louder and louder.

_They just can't hear you. Keep trying. They have to be here._

She tries the breakroom. A bottle of water has fallen on the floor, and the contents turned a pile of dust into something like mud on the floor.

Her stomach roils. Mouth waters.

She rushes to the sink and empties her stomach contents into it.

.

* * *

.

(A woman, walking through the streets, aimless. She knocks into several people as she wanders and doesn't seem to notice any protests or the sirens.

An EMT grabs hold of her near Times Square. Shock, he tells the police officer with him.

They sit her down on a bench with a blanket and a water bottle, tell her to wait for a few minutes.

When they come back, the blanket is folded neatly next to the unopened bottle.)

.

* * *

.

Ana blinks and suddenly realizes she's staring at her kitchen table. She doesn't know when that happened, or how she got home.

The alarm clock is still going off, so she gets up and wanders into her room.

Turns it off.

And after standing there for a moment, she realizes something is bothering her.

No cars. No conversations. No music from the apartment next door.

She can't hear anything.

Ana collapses to the floor.

.

* * *

.

…_President declared a state of emergency. Coming to you live…_

_Although there are no definitive reports yet, losses are expected to be at least a few million…._

…_reports of disappearances throughout the world._

.

* * *

.

Ana couldn't sleep that night, either.

It was too quiet.

.

* * *

.

…

.

* * *

Author's Notes:

I've been kicking this idea around for awhile and wanted to give it life. I also wanted to get back into writing, so... two birds, and all that. It's a different style than I usually write in, so I'm excited to challenge myself.


	2. two: stretched too thin

Title: more than these bones

Rating: M

Summary: The silence has a disturbing way of needling under her skin and burrowing into her brain until the only thing she can hear is the sound of a million ghosts. (Fem!OC/Natasha)

Warnings: descriptions of wide-scale destruction, violence, anxiety, disassociation, disturbing elements.

AN at bottom.

* * *

….

**.two.**

**.stretched too thin.**

_the tired sunsets and the tired_

_people – _

_it takes a lifetime to die and _

_no time at_

_all._

— Charles Bukowski —

…

* * *

.

In the morning, Ana goes to the nearest police station. She waits in line, like she's supposed to.

One hour turns into two which starts to bleed into three.

She's fine waiting; there is nowhere else for her to be.

(And here, at least, she is surrounded by the sounds of civilization. Or at least whatever is left of it.

Many people are crying. One group is trying convince themselves that this isn't happening. Across the hall, she can hear someone yelling. Yelling that they have to find her son.

She considers moving to the back of the line, just so she doesn't have to leave.

But then a police officer comes and shuffles her out of line and into an interrogation room.)

.

* * *

.

"What's your name?"

"Ana Fromm."

He jots it down, then asks for her address, place of work, and work address.

"Can you confirm, with total certainty, that any of your family members or neighbors are either alive or missing?"

_Missing_. What a way to put it. "I'm not certain about any of my neighbors. My parents are gone, but that was before…" She pauses. How to even call it? She settles on a simple, "Before."

The officer nods. "Friends, coworkers. acquaintances?"

"I went to the Corner Bakery Café on my lunch break, and saw a barista there, Melanie, uhm…"

"Vanish?"

She nods. Her throat tightens when she thinks of watching the girls horrified face just – disintegrate. Into nothingness.

_Did it hurt?_ she wonders, and at first she is almost – numb – at the thought.

Then, she is slowly sickened.

The officer snaps his fingers in her face, and Ana starts. He looks unimpressed, and she wonders if it's because of her or the situation. Is it cold or is it practical, to be inconvenienced by the destruction of several million people, all at once?

"Coworkers? Friends? Anyone else?" he prompts.

"When I went back to work, the phone at the front desk was off the hook. There was, uhm… there was a dust pile in the breakroom. There were three others at the office that day. I'm not sure if that was any or all of them."

The officer nods, gets the names of River, Selene, and Ivan, and then leads her out of the room. As he waves in someone else in, Ana stands and looks around the room.

Suddenly, the sound of crying and yelling and screaming – anger and anguish – it is too much.

She can feel it crawling under her skin like little ants, contaminating her blood stream, moving about endlessly, endlessly, scratching under the surface, searching for something hungry and searching but for what there is _nothing left_ –

She rubs her arms and walks quickly to the door. Too quickly, seeing as she accidentally rams her shoulder into a sobbing woman.

She does not apologize. The woman does not seem to notice as she half collapses into the wall.

.

* * *

.

There is nowhere for her to go, nothing for her to do.

Standing on the corner of Times Square, Ana realizes she has no groceries at home. There is nothing for her to eat.

A man stumbles into her, grabbing her hands with a desperate kind of strength. She jumps, and he's in her face, wailing. Snot is running down from his nose, and his eyes are red.

For a second, she thinks he's a junkie. It takes a second to process his words, but by then he has already grabbed onto someone else.

_Have you seen my son? My baby boy?_

She has nowhere to go, and nothing to do. No one is waiting for her.

But she does not want to go home. So she moves, stumbling along in the endless, empty sea that New York City has become overnight.

.

* * *

.

Ana blinks and realizes, once again, she does not know how she got to where she is. It takes her a second to recognize the front doors of the studio. She pushes on the door, but it is locked.

She looks at her hand, pressed up against the glass door she has looked at probably a thousand times before, and feels the odd sensation that she is in a place she has never been before.

Frowning, she pushes against the door again.

There are no spontaneous miracles. It is still locked, and she does not have the key on her.

Ana sighs to herself. "Seems like it's gonna be home, then," she says to her hand and unwilling feet. Her mouth twists uncomfortably around the words, mutilating them.

The ants start crawling under her skin again. She pulls on her earlobe with a scowl and takes the long way home.

.

* * *

.

Sabrina Rook has never looked so serious, which is saying something for a reporter who's covered child soldiers and terrorists, both human and alien.

"As of eight PM, the White House has reported roughly sixty million Americans as officially missing nationwide," she says. "Another hundred and fifty million are unaccounted for."

Her mouth twists to the side, the only break in her professionalism so far. "If you have not reported to your nearest local police station or trauma center, you are urged to do so as soon as possible,"

Ana can hear one of her neighbors sobbing next door.

It's one of the neighbors who used to sleep all day and party all night. It sounds like the girl – she doesn't know her name, can't clearly picture her face. She remembers a pink mohawk and large holes in her ears.

River had called them by name once – gears, maybe? Or gorges. Something to that effect.

Her eyes sting.

Ana thinks about going over to the neighbor's. Wills her feet to come out from under her plush blanket, touch down onto the floor and carry her there. But they do not move, and so neither does she.

She sinks further into the couch, under the cocoon of her blanket and the eleven o'clock news.

Ana does not sleep.

From the way she cries all night, it seems the neighbor doesn't either.

.

* * *

.

(This does not make Ana feel any less alone. If anything, it feels like something has been ripped open inside of her.

She does not know how to fill it or close it, and so the wound just weeps inside of her.)

.

* * *

.

Three days later, she watches as Sabrina informs her, and the rest of New York City, That approximately half of the world's population has just –

(_Disintegrated_.

Into ash, into dust.

Into nothingness.)

\- Vanished.

"Approximately" because there are some places – hidden indigenous alcoves, tumultuous warring regions – places they cannot reach either because of ignorance or hostility, places they cannot count the – _dead _– Vanished.

Half of the world.

Men, women, children.

Over seven living beings, gone, just like –

_snap _

– that.

The neighbors sobs have not stopped since that first night, and they are both comforting and sickening. Ana cannot stand the sound of them right now, nor can she stand the ringing in her ears, or the sound of silence caused by the absence of four and a half million people.

Ana shoots to her feat, blanket and pillow under one arm, purse with her keys under the other.

She practically runs down the stairs, and she certainly is running on her way out the building.

Not because it's cold, or dark, or night. Not because she is afraid of someone lurking around the corner or stalking her to her destination.

She hates running, but she hates the empty streets of New York City even more.

.

* * *

.

Vanished is a pretty word for it, kind of like how people say the dead have _passed away_.

They're pretty words, but inaccurate and misleading all the same. Those people will not be coming back because they are not lost.

_Vanished_, she says, and the word feels vile in her mouth.

.

* * *

.

In what feels like no time at all, she is sliding the key into its proper place, and pushing the door to the studio open.

She ignores the piles of ash, and the fact that no one greets her like they normally would.

Instead, she heads up to the loft, and she begins to work.

Ana is lost in it, as she usually is, and the feeling is so – familiar – _liberating _– she could cry.

.

* * *

.

Ana works through the night, filling canvases with paint. She does not care if no one buys her pieces anymore – painting is her release, a way to both hide from the world and to pull its innards out from under its hard shell and expose them.

Besides – it isn't like there's much else left to her anymore.

She would much rather be lost to the world than lost in it.

.

.

.

* * *

Author's Notes:

Ahh, thanks so much to everyone who's followed and favorited this story so far! I have to say, I wasn't expecting a lot of interest in this, so I want to say thank you, and I hope you enjoy this story. I'm excited to take this journey with you all.

I'm going to try to update weekly, but as I say this, I will be having guests for the rest of this month. If I don't update in the next two weeks, there will definitely be one following that.

Until next time!


	3. three: berezina

Title: more than these bones

Rating: M

Summary: The silence has a disturbing way of needling under her skin and burrowing into her brain until the only thing she can hear is the sound of a million ghosts. (Fem!OC/Natasha)

Warnings: descriptions of wide-scale destruction, violence, anxiety, disassociation, disturbing elements.

AN at bottom.

* * *

…

**.three.**

**.berezina.**

_Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, 'tis time to do 't. Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him._

— William Shakespeare —

…

* * *

.

She raises her fingers to his face. Her fingers are trembling, and his face is still wet, and her heart is a gaping, empty cavern hungry for any semblance of human connection.

And yet, she does not touch his face.

She read, once, that mechanical "pets" made children feel even worse than being alone, compared to those who had real pets. She hadn't believed it then, but she did now. There is nothing worse than looking into someone's eyes and seeing your entire past, and yet knowing there is no way to reach them because they are gone, and they cannot feel or see you.

Paintings are no better than mannequins, sometimes. Worse, even, for all that they can look realistic.

And yet, Ana still finds time every day to paint the faces of everyone she remembers from Before.

They deserve to be remembered, she thinks.

They had deserved to live.

She drops her hands to her side instead.

This is a beautiful piece, she thinks. Ambitious. Nostalgic.

They are in the subway station, waiting for the 7. People are rushing to and fro, and yet he is in perfect stillness. His eyes are tired and sunken, his shoulders drooping as if they want to fall through the floor. And yet his face settles in a kind of knowing, some semblance of acceptance.

Did he expect what they would fall to, she wonders, or was he simply sharing commiseration in the fact that it was _almost_ the weekend, a quarter or a third or halfway through their miserable lives? A short break, only to be followed by the same old shit, again and again and again, until they dropped dead of a heart attack or retired to Florida or gave it all up to go bag groceries at the corner shop?

The monotony of the working life.

Ana turns away from _Thursday, No. 8_ to paint yet another portrait.

This one is of a woman, her face twisted in agony, her jawline and ear and hair disappearing into a flurry of ash.

When her fingers cramp, she wonders if this starves or feeds the abyss inside of her. But her mind whispers, _Quick, before you forget. Hurry, before you're gone too._

It is a mantra that's been drummed into her bones by now.

She takes a sip of some seven dollar cab, and then she picks up where she left off.

.

* * *

.

Normally, she would keep walking. Always in such a hurry, Ana was.

Funny, that the end of the world as she knew it didn't change that fact. Her lips quirk at the thought, a little sardonic.

The man is conventionally attractive and stereotypically American – blond hair, strong jaw, sturdy shoulders. He isn't her type, but that isn't what stops her. He's sketching, and he looks vaguely familiar.

(_Maybe they went to school together? Maybe she had seen him once or twice at the gallery?_

Something in her stretches wide, reaching for him.)

So she stops and takes a seat, leaving a table between them. And she watches him as he sketches, the lines on his face creasing, his hands moving in small, quick strokes. He's decisive, and thorough.

Admirable traits.

She isn't close enough to see his eyes, but she wishes she could – "Can I help you, miss?"

Ana jumps, startled, and remembers where she is.

"Oh! Uhm –" She takes a cursory glance at menu, but the letters there aren't stringing together into anything meaningful. The server is looking at her, tapping her finger on her hip, and Ana decides to default to something easy. Shouldn't matter what kind of place it is, right? "Just a coffee, please."

"Cream or sugar?"

"No, thanks. I'll take it black." Her server wanders away, and she's startled again when someone slides into the seat across from her.

Those eyes of his – she wants to burn them into her memory. Blue and flinty, like he's trying to be closed off but he isn't calm enough for it.

"Can I help you?"

Before she can even try to think up a lie, he leans forward and cocks an eyebrow at her. "You weren't going to stop until you saw me. Then you took a seat, and all you did was stare. So?"

Ana is taken aback. He's more – abrasive? aggressive? – than she was expecting. There's an air of expectancy and confidence around him, like he knows she's going to answer his questions, and he better like it.

_Soldier, maybe_? she wonders, and the notion shifts around in her brain. A puzzle piece searching for its place.

"Sorry. You looked like someone I knew – but I can see I'm mistaken, now," she says, wishing she hadn't stopped.

He's just staring at her, and she is deeply uncomfortable.

"I'm an artist," she blurts out, desperately wishing he would go away. "I've just been –ever since, the – you _know_ – I've been –"

These aren't words she ever wanted to breathe aloud, much less to a stranger, and she desperately wishes she could stop word vomiting. So when the server comes with her coffee, she stupidly tries to drink it all in one go, and then she's choking on hot liquid and he's _still just staring at her_.

The server rushes off to get her a water.

Quiet interrupts, thick and tense around them, and her mouth is speaking before she even recognizes she's opened it.

"I just… when I saw you, you seemed familiar. Everyone else is –"

(_Gone, _she doesn't say, but the word stretches between them. _Gone, Vanished, Destroyed._)

"Sorry for disturbing you," she tells him, and she grabs her wallet out of her purse. Hopes a five will cover the coffee and walks away without another word.

.

* * *

.

Later, as she paints the face of a man who sketches ghosts at cafes, she finally remembers who he was.

.

* * *

.

Is it foolishness, to lose the world and still be angry about it? Or is that strength?

Ana doesn't know, and it bothers her. The abyss is keening inside her, and she tries to drown it out with wine.

Is it acceptance, to lose the world and go on as if nothing has changed? Or is that denial?

She paints, six figures standing in a ruined New York. It's almost a vision of years ago, except for the fires burning in half-demolished buildings. The illuminate the blood dripping out of the buildings, flowing down to the river of blood running through the streets and staining everything they touch. Ash floats through the night air like starlight, disintegrating people and animals alike.

Is it weakness, to see ghosts everywhere of people she never even knew? Or is that insanity?

.

.

.

* * *

Author's Notes:

Hello again! Sorry for the wait. I know I wanted to update a lot earlier than this, but work and Real Life got in the way a bit.

Big thanks to everyone who's supported this story so far. I hope you continue to enjoy the ride.


	4. four: humpty dumpty

Title: more than these bones

Rating: M

Summary: The silence has a disturbing way of needling under her skin and burrowing into her brain until the only thing she can hear is the sound of a million ghosts. (Fem!OC/Natasha)

Warnings: descriptions of wide-scale destruction, violence, anxiety, disturbing elements.

* * *

...

**.four.**

**.humpty dumpty.**

_Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,_

_Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;_

_All the king's horses and all the king's men_

_Couldn't put Humpty together again._

— Mother Goose —

...

* * *

.

"So, is this it, then?"

Ana pauses, looking up from her sketchbook. "What do you mean?"

He gestures to their table, littered with empty coffee cups, eraser shavings, and abandoned pencils. For a moment, just a blessed moment – she is a student, back in Berlin, studying the differences between impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, Van Gogh and Seurat and Monet but then —

But then.

"The world ends, and all you do is make art?"

But then, she is not. Because the past is nothing but whispers, smoke in the fire of what she faces now.

There's a spark of indignation in her, and she opens her mouth to argue, but – what can she say, really? _I'll have you know, sometimes I get so drunk I can't see straight, and I fall asleep with a paintbrush in my hand and paint on my face_?

It just proves his point, really.

She hates it, because she hates feeling like a child. And sometimes, he makes her feel like the only artist left in New York, but sometimes he makes her feel like she's just playing dress up in her mother's clothes.

She's all but moved into the studio. She isn't even sure her landlord's even alive to collect rent, but if he is, she's overdue by – two and a half weeks, she realizes.

Two and a half weeks, and she's only left the studio to get coffee and draw Steve, or head to the market for more wine, bread, and Nutella.

Her mouth clicks shut, and she looks away from him.

"Sometimes, I sit and feed the birds. Or the cats." Whatever's around, really. Lord knows, there's too many these days.

Too much time.

Time to remember — time to forget — time to drown.

He scoffs, and in another world, she would have argued with him. _What are you doing_, she'd say. _Aren't you part of the Avengers? Go fuckin' avenge us, asshole._

But even the thought of raising her voice makes her bone tired, and she's already exhausted. She goes to sleep tired, wakes up tired, she walks through life fucking tired.. It's like living in molasses – the world is grey, and she's grey with it, and nothing is going to change, but the sun is going to rise day and day again, so what else is there to do but move along with it?

She does what she's always done: put one foot in front of the other, paint, drink. Go to sleep, wake up. Wait to die.

Day in, day out.

Rinse, cycle, repeat.

He gets up to leave and do whatever superheroes do after they've lost and there's no more battles to win, nothing more to fight, and she keeps drawing him.

Furrowed eyebrows, set jaw, eyes that are steady in their fury. Eyes that say, _I'm angry, and you should be, too._ Eyes that get angrier when you lie down and show your belly instead of putting your dukes up.

_A soldier without a war,_ she thinks, and her fingers itch. She wants him in charcoal – she wants him in paint.

_Why not both?_ her mind whispers. After all, what else is going to do – feed pigeons and cats?

She laughs, like she's told herself a particularly good joke, and prepares to do just that.

.

* * *

.

She knows, without knowing him all that much – (or at all, really) – that he is the kind of person who doesn't have _lost cause _or _give up_ in his vocabulary. He's a soldier at heart and a modern superhero. He's fought dictators, gods, and homicidal robots – and he's won against them all.

But he's won too many battles, and he's forgotten what it's like to lose.

He gets mad with her because he thinks she's given up. And she has – but what else is there to do? There is nothing else to fight but reality.

Ana wonders, when he has to come to terms with that, if it will break him, or if he'll try to put the pieces of what's left back together.

She hopes he'll pull it together.

Maybe it's because he's stereotypically American, and a war hero returned from the dead, or maybe it's because she's afraid of the dark and what lies in it, but she doesn't want to ever see him without a glint in his eye.

_What will we do, _she thinks, _if he is left with nothing to avenge?_

She doesn't believe in miracles. Ana is pathologically logical, but in a world where gods walk among men, and men can turn into machines or green rage monsters or defy death against ice and monsters and history, that shouldn't mean anything.

Anything can be logical, she reasons, when magic and mythology are real.

A_nything is possible, when nothing is impossible, _she thinks, and she tries not to feel like she's Alice in Wonderland.

She tries not to feel down, depressed, she really does.

When that fails, she gets drunk.

.

* * *

.

Steve is gone, for almost a month.

A part of her misses him, misses the way he snaps at her, teases her, challenges the quiet way she moves through the world.

She may move through New York like a ghost, but he grabs onto her and yells at her like she's not. It reminds her, that there's more to live for than the ghosts dogging their steps and plaguing their dreams.

Life as they knew it is gone, he reminds her, but that doesn't mean _everyone_ is gone.

She misses him, misses the way he dragged her screaming and kicking back into Brooklyn.

But at the same time — at the same time, she reminds herself.

He is beyond her, she thinks. He's fought Nazis, and gods, and homicidal robots.

If he's gone, that only means he's _fighting _again, right? Fighting for humanity, fighting for everything they've lost. _Avenging_.

_They have never lost_, she tells herself, and like everyone else in the world, she forgets. She forgets that, despite the fact the fact they may come from different times, different realms, different times and paces, they aren't different from her.

They are still mortal. They are still subject to the laws of life, and of death.

They are still at the mercy at the hands of emotion.

They can still be overwhelmed.

They can _lose_.

.

* * *

.

She used to hate it, small talk. There was no rhyme or reason for it.

People could talk, or they could be silent. They could act, or they could be silent.

Small talk defied that. Meaningless words that filled the silence, an inactivity that filled the void of nothing, something that made you feel like you were being, talking, _living_, but really amounted to nothing.

And then everyone died, Small talk stopped, because people _wanted _or they died. There was no in between. No one cared about the rain or the snow or the wind these days.

People mourned, and they died, and the dead lived in the spaces between them.

She hated it. But she didn't know any other way to live.

Until —

She met the soldier. The man who could not live quietly, and whom she irritated, because she didn't know how else to live.

When she lived, and he disappeared, she didn't feel despair, or doubt, or fear.

He was a _hero_. He had breathed justice. lived in the face of terror and might, one-upped terrorists and murderers, dictators and unjust personified.

Steven Rogers, Captain America, was a hero who spat in the face of injustice. He could not die, and he could not lose. He was a war hero, and a survivor, and he'd crossed time and place to prove it.

When he did not show up, time and time again, she did not panic.

Ana smiled, because she knew he would not disappear without giving them a reason to smile.

Steve Rogers defied all logic, all reason, all reality. He was something beyond them, something wonderful and marvelous and _special_.

.

* * *

.

And then, one day, he was back.

Ana wanted to touch him, his face, and so she had. He had been beyond anything she ever managed, beyond anything she knew.

He was_ Captain America_.

He changed the tide of war, of history, a light in the dark night of war.

.

* * *

.

With her fingers on his cheek, and his eyes locking with hers, he sighed, and then he smiled.

But the smile pasted on his face, it was familiar. Her fingers trembled, unsure.

.

* * *

.

(_He had changed the tide of war, had changed the writing in stone in history. He had been hope in dark times. He had been, until —_

_Until he couldn't, anymore._

_He was a symbol, but even more — he was a man._

_And men fall, crumble, and even, sometimes —_

— _men can break._)

.

* * *

.

"Steve?" she asked, and he crumpled into her shoulder. She caught him, barely, and rubbed circles in his back.

Unease rested in her bones, and she couldn't understand why — or rather, she could, and she didn't want to.

The silence stretched between them again, and she threaded one hand through his hair as the other caressed his back.

"…Steve?" she asked again, a whisper in the dark, the smoke from a blown out candle.

He raised his head, and she recognized the look in his face. She hated it, more than anything. _What have you done,_ she wanted to scream. _You can't have —_

_You can't have lost_, she wanted to say, but it was obvious that he had.

"I've decided to start a group," he told her, desolation in his eyes and a brittle smile on his face. He tried to stay strong, but she recognized the face of someone who had lost everything.

.

* * *

.

He knew, and yet he didn't. Not really.

She had lost everything. And yet —

Now, with the look in his eye, the shadow there, she knew —

— there was no turning back. There were no magic fixes, or life-saving moves. The world had really and truly —

The world had really ended, truly and completely. There was a small part of her, apparently that had thought —

— really, honest to god thought he could do — do something.

But he smiled at her, and it was a brittle, fragile thing that condemned her. He was kind, and she wanted to scream at him for it. People weren't mindlessly _kind _these days, and it reminded her.

It reminded her of the broken and shadowy history that plagued them. Of the ghosts that followed her wherever she went. _Don't forget us, _they whispered in her ear. _Bring us with you_.

She was a cynic and a drunk, and the world was gone. But she had thought —

A part of her _really_ had —

Had hoped he could overcome the odds, history, death and titans.

He was, after all, friends with gods and heroes alike.

And then he smiled at her, all fragile and glass-like, and she didn't understand why it made her feel like breaking something.

.

* * *

.

"I've decided to start a group," he said, smiling at her. "You should come," that stupid fucking smiled on his face, and it felt like —

She couldn't explain why, but it felt like bells started tolling at those words.

.

.

.

* * *

.

A/N:

An alternative title for this chapter could be _Kill Your Heroes_.

Thank you all again for enjoy your support. If you have any feedback on the story, I'd love to hear it. If anyone is interested, I have a version of this chapter written from Steve's POV, as well as a few possible AU one-shots that I was thinking of posting, along with a playlist.

Either way, our favorite red-headed spy will be showing up soon!

Based on life stuff, I may start updating every other week. But I wanted to get this out, even if it is a day late.

Have a great night, my lovelies.


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